Drain You by M. Beth Bloom Page B

photograph.
    Sometimes James’s shoulder brushed against mine as we walked, but mostly it didn’t. Mostly we just paced on, staring ahead at the curving black road. My body felt exhausted, but I couldn’t relax. James wasn’t Morgan, he wasn’t just a dude, some guy I could joke with, then flirt with, then leave.
    “Do you like living in Cambridge?” I asked finally.
    “I guess. I like the seasons, the leaves changing colors.”
    I said, “We have colors and seasons here, too,” butthen stopped myself. No, we didn’t.
    “The color of money at the Four Seasons doesn’t count.”
    “Ha, ha.” I fake-smiled.
    “But here’s cool too.”
    “When do you go back? I mean, when do your parents get back to L.A.?”
    James looked up like he was counting weeks or days in his head, but he took too long so I interrupted, “You know, my parents think I’m with that guy Morgan right now. It’s the only way they’d let me go out. I don’t know what they’d do if they found out I was with you.”
    “No MTV for a week?”
    I rolled my eyes. “Maybe. Maybe they don’t care.”
    “I’m sure they care if you lie.”
    “Probably. I don’t know. I mean, I’m seventeen. Pretty hard to deal with.”
    “Sure. I remember seventeen.”
    “Spare me. You turned twenty and your life’s so great?”
    “Not at all. I used to rock out. I used to shred.”
    “You were in a band?” I said it like it was dreamy. I said it in the dreamy way a dumb groupie at the Roxy would.
    “Yeah. I played, like, two chords, just through pedals. We sucked.”
    “Artsy, huh?”
    “Thurston Moore came to one of our shows. Pretty artsy.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “Ask him about it,” he said. “Ask him about Malcolm Hex.”
    “Ew.”
    “Told you we sucked.”
    “Well, now I believe you.”
    “We covered ‘Stairway.’ Or part of it. More like a deconstruction really.”
    “Disgusting. When’s that from? The sixties?”
    He pretended to be offended.
    “So,” I asked, “what’s the deal with your parents?”
    “Daniel and Charlotte are fine. They let me do my thing.”
    “I wasn’t aware you had a thing.”
    “Sure. Stalking, sixties culture-jamming, other hideous stuff.”
    “Reading?”
    “I shuffle between Green Eggs and Ham and Ham on Rye .”
    “Sports?”
    “Please.”
    “Dating?”
    “Less so.”
    “Bummer. Anything else of note?”
    “Not really. I’m kind of in a ‘me’ phase.”
    “You’re preaching to the preacher with that one.”
    “What about your parents, are they so bad?”
    “No,” I said. “They’re neutral.”
    “They’re neutral but they side with Morgan?”
    “He’s just really safe.”
    “Oh. Safe.” James thought about that for a minute. “Makes sense.”
    “It’s stupid. Everyone’s safe. It’s high school.”
    He said, “Well, I’m not safe.”
    “Yeah, you’re a total heartbreaker. Obviously.” I waved my hand at him.
    He didn’t say anything to that, just motioned to a small patch of grass on the side of the canyon, where we sat down.
    “Morgan totally doesn’t matter,” I said. It felt weird saying it.
    “It’s okay. He can matter. I only met you less than a week ago.”
    “Still,” I said, reaching for his hand. I held it in mine and traced the veins between his knuckles and his wrist bone. In the dark it looked like he had no lines or wrinkles. My fingers stroked his fingers, then moved down again to his palm.
    “That was your best friend Libby back there?” James lifted his free hand to my face, pushing my bangs to the side.
    “‘Was’ being the crucial word. I don’t know what she is now.”
    “You should stay away from her.”
    I pushed his hand, then backed away from him and folded my arms across my chest. “That’s, like, the exact opposite of what I’m going to do.”
    “She’s messed up. You know I’m right.”
    “I don’t know anything.”
    “You’re going to get hurt.”
    “Yeah, when the twins run me over in their